A Very Private War
(2023)(The first book in the Esther and the Professor Mystery series)
A novel by Tia Brown
In the late summer of 1940 it seems inevitable that Britain too will be invaded just as so much of Europe had been and the once sleepy little town of Poole has been identified as one of the four likeliest places for them to land so residens have received letters telling them to stay put so that troops can be evacuated. A shortage of housing has meant that Esther Graham’has had to go back to living with her parents while her husband is away fighting, and is juggling bringing up her young son, working at a research establishment and driving a WVS canteen van a couple of times a week to take food to the men who man the anti-aircraft batteries and work down on the Quay. She could cope with all that but she’s also being blackmailed over her husband’s affair.
Everything changes when she and her boss, Professor James Lomax, overhear one of their colleagues being blackmailed by the same woman. No one will take them seriously when they report it, so they decide to try to identify the traitor themselves and are aided, abetted and sometimes hindered by the Professor’s enigmatic young cousin, Captain Carmichael. The Professor isn’t fit for military service because of tuberculosis but is as determined to prove himself as Esther is, even though it means being under enemy attack from air raids and the enemy within…
Can they help to stop the invasion? And can Esther really blame her husband for his affair when she’s feeling closer and closer to the brilliant, irascible man who understands her in a way that it feels as if no one else ever has? The only thing that she can be sure of is that she is fighting a very private war and that the consequences of not winning it would be unbearable.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Everything changes when she and her boss, Professor James Lomax, overhear one of their colleagues being blackmailed by the same woman. No one will take them seriously when they report it, so they decide to try to identify the traitor themselves and are aided, abetted and sometimes hindered by the Professor’s enigmatic young cousin, Captain Carmichael. The Professor isn’t fit for military service because of tuberculosis but is as determined to prove himself as Esther is, even though it means being under enemy attack from air raids and the enemy within…
Can they help to stop the invasion? And can Esther really blame her husband for his affair when she’s feeling closer and closer to the brilliant, irascible man who understands her in a way that it feels as if no one else ever has? The only thing that she can be sure of is that she is fighting a very private war and that the consequences of not winning it would be unbearable.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
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